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Lecturer(s)
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Vendra Maria Cristina Clorinda, Mgr. PhD.
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Course content
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Part 1 (Week 1 - Week 4) - Antiquity 1. Introduction: Reading about Love 2. Platos Theory of Love and Death - Symposium 3. Platos Theory of Desire - Lysis 4. Aristotles Theory of Friendship and its Varieties - Nichomachean Ethics Part 2 (Week 5 - Week 7) - Modernity 5. René Descartes on Love as Emotion - The Passions of the Soul 6. Arthur Schopenhauer on Love as an Illusion - The Metaphysics of the Sexual Love 7. Soren Kierkegaard on Love and Seduction - The Diary of a Seducer Part 3 (Week 8 - Week 14) - Contemporaneity 8. Luc Boltanski on the Destiny of Love - Love and Justice as Competences 9. Zygmunt Bauman on Love as Uncertainty - Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds 10. Iris Murdoch on Love as Atention and Absorpiton - The Sacred and Profane Love Machine 11. Sigmund Freud - The Psychology of Love 12. Georg Simmel on Love and Marriage - On Women, Sexuality, and Love 13. Erich Fromm on Love as Need and Desire - The Art of Loving 14. Recapitulation: The Future of Love
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Learning activities and teaching methods
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unspecified, unspecified, unspecified, unspecified, unspecified
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Learning outcomes
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What is love? What is to be loved? What does it mean to love ourselves? Is love a choice or a feeling? In what sense intimacy, passion, and commitment are core components of love? How to think seriously about love today? In trying to formulate an answer to these questions, the course will propose the reading of writings about theories of love from the history of Western philosophy, from the social sciences and pedagogy. The course will encourage students motivation and critical ability to read texts in a foreign language (English) and to dialogue in class. It will offer them the opportunity to verbalize their understanding, share their thoughts, and examine the proposed topic from a coherent variety of perspectives. More precisely, focused on the topic of love, the course will deal with ancient, modern, and contemporary thinkers reflexting about friendship and love, communal love, societal love.
The course will be divided into three parts. (1) The first part will consider the topic of love in ancient philosophy with reference to Plato?s and Aristotle?s texts. Love will be approached as connected to desire, death, and friendship. (2) The second part will deal with some of the most interesting modern perspectives about love, namely those proposed by Descartes, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegard. Love will be considered here as linked to the notions of emotion, illusion, and seduction. (3) The third part the course will discuss contemporary theories of love from psychology, sociology, and philosophy. More precisely, it will focus on Boltanski?s and Bauman?s sociological analyses of love, on Freud?s and Fromm?s psychological understanding of love, and on Murdoch?s and Simmel?s philosophical investigations of love.
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Prerequisites
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None
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Assessment methods and criteria
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unspecified
Evaluations of students in this course will be based on: (1) participation, which includes active discussion in class, attendance (80%), class assignments. In case of absence, the student has to communicate it and to ask the professor for any assignments or key discussions concerning the missed lesson. (2) A final paper (2000-3000 words). Additional information will be provided at the beginning of the course.
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Recommended literature
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Adrienne M. Martin (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy. New York: Routledge. 2019.
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Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. .
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Arthur Schopenhauer. The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes. Paris: Edition Dupleix. 2013.
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Erich Fromm. The Art of Loving. New York: Continuum. 2008.
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Georg Simmel. On Women, Sexuality, and Love. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1984.
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Iris Murdoch. The Sacred and Profane Love Machine. London: Penguin Books. 1974.
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Luc Boltanksi. Love and Justice as Competences, trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2012.
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Plato. Plato on Love (Lysis, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, with Selections from Republic and Laws). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. 2006.
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René Descartes. The Passions of the Soul (1646). Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. 1989.
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Sigmund Freud. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. New York: Touchstone. 1963.
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Soren Kierkegaard. The Diary of a Seducer. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1997.
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Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2003.
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